1) I came out of the kitchen one day to see a cop car parked in front of my truck. Being curious I walked to the door and saw another car behind my truck and a couple of cops on the street looking back at my house. I went out front and asked if I could help them. They proceeded to ask me if I knew of someone running around the neighborhood with a gun! NOPE! They had gotten reports of my neighbor running around with a gun. They asked if someone was holding my family hostage inside andthat I needed to tell them no or they would be harmed. I assured them that this was not the case and that if someone was holding them hostage I would figure out some way to signal them. I advised them that there is a gate at the end of our yard leading into the neighbors yard in the trees as we used to help the former owners with blackberry control. They were welcome to use it.

I went inside, locked the doors and ran downstairs to shut everything down there as well. WulfieMan said he had heard the neighbors teenage kids playing with plastic squirt guns and yelling “I’m gonna shoot you with my gun!” Someone must have heard them and called the cops. WulfieMan went out to let the cops know and saw them climbing the stairs next door and about 6 cops with guns drawn. It was pretty scary.

2) Came home one night after dinner (7 or 8 pm) to see the road in front of the house closed down and cops and ambulances everywhere. We had to park a couple of blocks away and prove that we lived in our house to get past the police lines. It appears that 3 kids stole a car and when they tried to make the left turn onto our street, didn't do to good of a job of it. They took out the car sitting in the left turn lane on our street, bounced off the curb behind my truck, Hit another car in the turn lane, bounced around and hit the bus stop a few yards in front of my truck (Yea! My truck was spared) took out the neighbor's fence and the bus stop, bounced back and hit yet another car. And came to rest in the neighbor's driveway. The kids then took off down the street on foot. The cops were not sure if the couple in the 3rd car were going to make it so they were there all night doing an investigation. When I left for work at 6 am they were just taking down the blockage so I was able to leave.

3) This happened years ago when I was in high school. This was Pre-911 My dad was out of town for work and on Saturday nights, my brother would stay up latewatching war movies in the family room. He suddenly heard a knock at our back door and looked up to see our neighbor standing there. He answered the door to hear neighbor say that he had been shot. Brother didn't know what to do so he went to wake up my mom. Mom is blind without her glasses so she saw my brother shaking her and a large black man behind him. She screamed which woke me up and ran around the bed to get close enough to realize it was Neighbor. He had jumped the 7 foot wood fence between both yards and come over to get help. Mom called for an ambulance and neighbor survived. Turns out later that neighbor (who we had been good friends with) was dealing drugs and it was a drug deal gone bad. The whole family had major issues in the next few years and last I heard almost all of them were in jail for one thing or another including their son (my brother's best friend) murdering a woman who was waving at a friend on the street corner. They thought she was thowing gang signs in their turf so they killed her.

The family drug deal reminds me of another one! I am not sure where the actual crimes occurred but it indirectly involved my house.

My mom works at a high school and was friendly with one of her aides. Her aide had two kids around my age, and my parents paid them to cat sit while we were on vacation a few times. They had keys to our house because of this. Around the time I was in high school, the mom was fired for calling out constantly.

Fast forward to 2009, my junior year of college. Reading the local newspaper online I see that mom and son had been arrested for robbing a convenience store, mom was the getaway car driver. I called my mom, and she said "Oh yeah, they've had problems with drugs for years. That's why we changed the lock that time." Turns out the son and I think his sister had already had trouble with the law for breaking into dead people's houses during their funerals to rob them for drug money

I woke up in bed one night. Because I couldn't breathe. As I was groggily coming out of my sleep I realized I couldn't move, either.

Then, I realized that I couldn't move because there was a heavy weight on top of me and I couldn't breathe because something was holding my lips together.

Fortunately I was able to get a hand loose and rip off the duct tape that was covering my mouth. Fortunately I was able to scream as I tried to ward off the worst of the blows while the intruder was smacking me on my head with a roll of duct tape.

Most fortunately, it was a comfortable night and all the windows were open* so my upstairs neighbors heard my screams for help and started making a racket upstairs. Yelling "Are you okay?" Stomping their feet, etc. (They called the police.)

The intruder ran away. And got away. They never caught him.

Fortunately, I ended up with only a concussion and a few bruises.

Yup. That's the scariest thing that ever happened in my n'hood.

*Unfortunately the windows were open . . . I had the window next to my back door open and the intruder simply snipped the screen, reached in and unlocked my door.

When I was about 12, we had some lowlifes who lived down the road from us. They had a foster daughter my age, and we were vaguely aware that she was not being treated well. Well, one night the foster mom physically attacked her, hitting her, tearing at her clothes, and scratching her face. "Megan" ran away from the house (in the rain, in winter) and ran to our house because she couldn't think of anything else to do. Imagine me coming home from swim team practice, to the shocking sight of my mom and a girl I knew, sitting in our living room crying and holding a towel to her face.

There weren't really procedures in place for child-abuse emergencies in that time and place, but my mother called a friend who worked for DFACS. She called someone who came and got Megan, and got her to a new foster home that night.

The new foster home was very kind to her. She appeared at school a few days later in nice new clothes and with a smile on her face. They adopted her eventually. She's one of my Facebook friends now and has a family of her own.

This happened each fall down the road from the subdivision DH & I lived in located in a Southern state.

The subdivison had been part of a farm, and one of the farm family members, an older woman, lived in a house next to the last remaining part of the farm, a cornfield. The road leading to the subdivision made a 90-degree left turn at her house, which was about 25 feet back from the road with a large oak tree in the front yard.

Every November we lived there, about two weeks before Thanksgiving, her family would butcher a hog for her in her front yard. They'd string up the hog in the oak tree and let things drain into a kettle underneath. This would usually take a day or so. Then they'd take the hog down, cut it up and start roasting and cooking appropriate sections. The entire process took almost a whole week.

People who probably didn't want to see the up-close mechanics of hog butchering got to anyway since we had to slow down substantially to safely make the sharp curve. If you didn't slow down, you ended up in the cornfield, which DH & I did late one night in a thick fog (I kept tellling him he needed to make the curve and he didn't believe me).

When I lived with my parents (but was not home) a rabid raccoon came right up to their front door! They had to call animal control, who shot it on the front lawn. They had to clean up the mess with bleach.

I was driving home late one night. I saw a man and a woman struggling in the middle of the street. I drove my car towards them and separated them with my car. She jumps in the passenger seat and screams "DRIVE." He punches in the driver's side window and there is glass all over me. I floor the gas pedal and he grabs onto the side mirror to keep from falling off. She's still screaming "DRIVE", he's screaming "STOP." My plan was to speed up the car and then slam on the brakes. After I gained speed, he just let go and rolled on the street.

I drove back to the original scene with the woman. She was hysterical and there were cop cars all over the place. They treated her for head wounds and treated him for mutiple bumps and bruises. I just brushed all the glass off myself.

Turns out she was a prostitute and he was a customer and they got in an argument. Charges were filed, I went to court and eventually he paid restitution to fix my window.

When I was about 12, we had some lowlifes who lived down the road from us. They had a foster daughter my age, and we were vaguely aware that she was not being treated well. Well, one night the foster mom physically attacked her, hitting her, tearing at her clothes, and scratching her face. "Megan" ran away from the house (in the rain, in winter) and ran to our house because she couldn't think of anything else to do. Imagine me coming home from swim team practice, to the shocking sight of my mom and a girl I knew, sitting in our living room crying and holding a towel to her face.

There weren't really procedures in place for child-abuse emergencies in that time and place, but my mother called a friend who worked for DFACS. She called someone who came and got Megan, and got her to a new foster home that night.

The new foster home was very kind to her. She appeared at school a few days later in nice new clothes and with a smile on her face. They adopted her eventually. She's one of my Facebook friends now and has a family of her own.

We had an older man living on our cul de sac a few years ago. His neighbor had left her grill too close to their shared fence and the fence caught on fire. He ran out of his front door wearing nothing but a short, frilly skirt and used his hose to put out the fire.

In my parents' neighborhood, there is another older gentleman who rides his bike in nothing but a thong. The first couple of times I saw him, I had to do a double take because I thought he was naked.

Im not sure "old man in a thong" is a better option than "naked old man."

I had to ask my father if I saw what I thought I saw, and he said 'Nah, he's in a thong,' in a casual way.

We lived in a four-plex in the upstairs unit, so we live over a couple, the manager lives across from us, and there was another unit downstairs front. Brand-new baby at the time.

I got up to feed him in the middle of the night. I wore 24 hour contacts plus was sleep deprived so I first thought the 'fog' I saw was from that. No, something was on fire below the window. Husband got manager up, and he put out the folding chair that was on fire. All seemed well so we went back to sleep. To be awoken by the yelling below us. Both of us went down since we knew the couple. Drunk husband who hadn't been there was yelling at wife. Totally an irrational. (Don't remember if we had to call the cops to get him to leave her alone or not.)

All seems well, till several weeks later we are woken up by a fireman banging on our door. There is a fire in our carport. I realize that it is just below our (very kind) manager's apartment and he is not out here. Firemen had to break down his door and wake him. I take my baby and go to a friend's. Husband spots 'drunk husband' on the street and mentions it to 'wife neighbor'. She goes off on 'drunk husband'. He wasn't supposed to be anywhere near her. Cops check his vehicle. Yup, he set the fire.

Insurance had a fun time with two melted tires and bubbled paint on our car. Hers, of course, was the one torched and ours had been parked beside it.

But I was always so glad I realized manager wasn't there. Scares me to think he could have died.

Sitting in the (west-facing) living room and hearing the tornado sirens go off. Heading for the basement through the (east-facing) kitchen and realizing that the trees in the backyard were blowing in a direction opposite to the trees in the front yard. Sitting down in the basement under a heavy workbech for what felt like years while the tornado went overhead -- luckily, without touching down.

When I lived with my parents (but was not home) a rabid raccoon came right up to their front door! They had to call animal control, who shot it on the front lawn. They had to clean up the mess with bleach.

When I lived with my parents (but was not home) a rabid raccoon came right up to their front door! They had to call animal control, who shot it on the front lawn. They had to clean up the mess with bleach.

When I lived with my parents (but was not home) a rabid raccoon came right up to their front door! They had to call animal control, who shot it on the front lawn. They had to clean up the mess with bleach.